Seahawks sign Kam Chancellor to 3-year extension

RENTON – The Seahawks have signed strong safety Kam Chancellor to a three-year contract extension, locking up one of the core members of their defense for four more seasons.

The extension is worth $36 million and includes $25 million in guarantees, according to ESPN’s Josina Anderson, who first reported the agreement on Tuesday. Chancellor was entering the final year of his previous deal, a four-year extension he signed before the 2013 season that averaged a little over $7 million. So with the three years added on, the 29-year-old Chancellor will be under contract with Seattle through the 2020 season.

“I’m here for another four years,” Chancellor said. “It’s a blessing.”

While the full details of the extension have yet to be revealed – initially reported terms can be misleading – the reported $12 million average in new money would make Chancellor the third-highest paid Seahawk behind quarterback Russell Wilson and cornerback Richard Sherman. It makes Chancellor one of the NFL’s highest paid safeties and ties him with Miami’s Reshad Jones for annual average among strong safeties specifically.

“I just appreciate it,” Chancellor said. “I appreciate the contract and I appreciate what the organization has done for me. It just allows me to be free out there, just free out there and I can get back to being the reckless Kam I am on the field.”

Comments from both the team and Chancellor over the last two days gave the impression that it was only a matter of time before an agreement was reached on an extension. Coach Pete Carroll said after the team’s first practice of training camp on Sunday that the talks had been positive and that he hoped a deal would get finalized soon. Chancellor said he shared Carroll’s optimism and also expressed his desire to finish his career in Seattle, the place it started in 2010 as a fifth-round pick.

“I love this team,” he said Monday. “They gave me the first opportunity, the only opportunity, and I would love to retire here.”

His extension will make that a very real possibility, something that may have been hard to imagine two years ago – almost to the day – when Chancellor began a holdout that lasted two games into the regular season. Chancellor ended that holdout without getting a new deal from the Seahawks, who didn’t want to revisit the deal because it had three years remaining.

He said he believed the team’s word that it would take care of him when his time came.

Bennett added: “We’re happy for him. We’re gonna give him hugs because we know how hard it is to make money in the NFL and we’re just going to celebrate him. I think it’s going to be so live on the field today to know that one of your brothers got a contract extension.”

The three-year length of the extension – as opposed to four years – makes sense given Chancellor’s age and his recent injury history. He’s missed nine games because of injuries over the last three seasons (not counting the two for his holdout) and has had several surgeries, including procedures earlier this offseason to remove bone spurs from both ankles.

“I’m so proud for us to be able to do this today. As an organization, as a fan following and all of that, as a coach and just a guy that admires the heck out of this guy, this is really the kind of thing you want to do,” Carroll said. “This is a great kid, he’s a great leader, he’s a tough guy, he’s a heart-and-soul guy, he’s a fifth-round draft pick who broke all the way through from that and became a great football player and leader in our program.

“For us to have a chance to come together and this time, right in the middle, in the heart of his career, to be able to reward him like this is really something special.”